Signs at the Eagles’ gigs will warn that those caught texting, taking photos or filming will be asked to leave.
Photograph: Jason Weeding/AAP

Let’s be honest: mobile phones are horrid, germy little hand pirates, encased in plastic and the lure of connectivity, when actually all they do is steal our private lives and personal time. In social situations, they cleverly masquerade as helpful best friends allowing us to prod them during a lull in conversation, allowing us to hide our deeper social anxieties. All in all, they’re not great for us, I suspect.

But to think that we could return to a life without phones is ludicrous. That GPS satellite sailed long ago. It’s fair to say phones are as much a part of daily life as not wanting to go to work or cursing our overflowing inboxes when we get there.

With that in mind, it’s rather quaint that the American band the Eagles are asking fans not to switch their phones on – at all – at their concerts. Signs at gigs warn that guests caught texting, taking photos or filming will be asked to leave. The band were no doubt forced into this after yet another poignant moment in Hotel California went belly up after the addition of the bleep bleep of Beryl in Row 44’s Motorola flip.

Musicians asking audiences not to use their phones at gigs is nothing new. However, some venues and festivals in Australia have taken an allergy to people dicking around with them one step further by banning the holy selfie stick. That’s right. The cultural phenomenon so ubiquitous it was runner-up for Australian word of the year. Never mind that it’s two words.

Organisers of the Soundwave festival have said selfie sticks are the height of self-obsession and will be strict no-nos – the suggestion being that people can’t possibly focus on the music, man, if they’re busy getting their best angle with a broom handle.

Firstly, aren’t there riskier things to frisk for at a festival? Secondly, what if – dare I say it? – people can still enjoy the music and focus even as they are taking happy snaps or Vines? We view most things through a screen these days – and cope. Our lives are not some sort of simulacrum simply because they sometimes come pixellated.

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Telling gig goers what they can and can’t do at a live music event also implies a romantic notion that the pre-mobile, pre-social media era was better, purer – that audiences drained every single perfect drop out of every single moment and were somehow blessed with a far more divine musical experience.

Possibly, but not always. As far as I remember, there have always been distracted sods at gigs. Let’s not forget the smoking and drinking and dancing and talking and flirting and toilet trips (for whatever purpose) at gigs of yore. That happened.

Banning phones and selfie sticks seems a touch righteous. Do we really need even more rules at what’s supposed to be a fun night out? Surely life already has too many of the former and not enough of the latter. While I’m the first person to think someone holding up a camera for an entire gig is a dill, it’s their choice to be a dill. As we all know and have known since the dawn of YouTube, unless Kanye West is around and making a major boo-boo, no one ever watches those videos again anyway. So really, why all the fuss?